lost in all these lies
by on rooftops
Summary: Spencer looked lost and disastrous, but she felt a little like an earthquake or tornado, something unsteady and on the verge of catastrophe. - a series of one-shots - for Hope


**Disclaimer:** I do not own _Pretty Little Liars.  
_**A/N:** This is just a place to put my _PLL _feels and it is all for Hopebecause I love her and she's there to help me deal with all my ships and she's my iceburg. Also, this is incest. I'm aware it's incest, you're aware it's incest. Don't read it if it squicks you. It squicks me, too. But I couldn't help myself.

under eyelids

Spencer woke up before dawn, her skin hot beneath her sheets and the darkness suffocating. This happened every day, and every day she shut her eyes against the onslaught of early morning and tried to force the sour residue of dreams from her mind.

The dreams had been awful, before she found out. Awful because of Toby, awful because of Wren. Because loving two boys—Toby for his strength and Wren for his kindness, both of them for looking at her like she mattered—loving them both was bad enough. Loving them and dreaming of a third, back before—that had been nearly insufferable. It had felt like her subconscious was somehow cheating.

And then—_my dad, is he your father, too?_—and then her subconscious was not just a cheater. Her dreams were not just cruel to Toby and Wren; her dreams were wrong. Wrong as in illegal, dirty, extraordinarily illicit.

Spencer woke up and her mind rolled through images so vivid she thought that Jason had pressed his lips against her neck, had run his hands over her ribs, bit at her shoulder-blades, whispered words she could not remember, but which had made her happy in her sleep. And then she blinked her eyes on darkness and remembered, whispered, "He's your _brother_," the words terrible and loud in her bedroom, the words setting into her skin the way his lips never had, except in her dreams.

In her head, they were dreams, not nightmares. She often wondered whether they should have been nightmares. Whether dreams that felt right but were indescribably not-right, dreams that hit you like a sickness—one minute you're fine, the next you're retching over the toilet—were they nightmarish? Spencer decided, again and again, that they weren't.

Two weeks after everything turned wrong, Spencer threw her covers from her bed and crept downstairs, her head full of Jason. She walked down the sidewalk, lost in the memories—were they memories, or just lingering dreams?—dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, bare feet against cold pavement and hair frizzing in the humidity. Spencer looked lost and disastrous, but she felt a little like an earthquake or tornado, something unsteady and on the verge of catastrophe.

She turned around when lights started flicking on in front windows and the sky turned grey; she passed by the DiLaurentis's house and of course Jason was sitting on the front steps, of course he was. He raised a hand in greeting and she waved back.

"What're you doing up?" He spoke quietly, but his voice carried across the lawn.

"Couldn't sleep," she replied.

He nodded, brushing a hand through his hair and reminding Spencer terribly of what he had looked like in her head an hour before. "Do you want some coffee? I've just made a pot."

She hesitated, then stepped onto his lawn. A volcano, that's what she felt like. Ready to burn over and cover the whole world.

"Sure." She sat down beside him, and he grinned at the mess of her hair and her bare feet and then disappeared inside, coming out three minutes later with two cups of coffee.

"I put a little bit of cream and sugar in yours, but if you want more, or if you take it black—" Spencer took the mug from him and shook her head.

"This is fine, thank you."

"Sure," he sat down beside her, his bare feet looking out-of-place, for some reason. Like he ought to have been fully dressed at five in the morning, sitting on his front porch covered from his neck to his toes.

Spencer was halfway through her coffee when he spoke again. "Are you all right?"

She made a noise like a laugh, but it caught in her throat and strangled itself on the way out. "God, no."

"No." Jason shook his head. "It's okay to not be all right, you know."

"Like this, though?" she asked, glancing at him before returning her stare to their feet, forty bare toes on a step where she'd spent so much of her life. She'd never have thought she'd end up here again, after Ali died.

"Like what?" Jason set his cup on the porch. "Is it Ali? Or your dad?"

"It's always Ali. And our—my—whatever. Dad. It's always him, too."

Jason rolled his lower-lip between his teeth. Spencer wished she'd never imagined how that lip would feel between hers. "But…isn't he worse, now? Now that you know?"

"You know what the worst part is, aside from being so fucking blindsided by this? The worst part is—" Spencer cut off, then continued, "Have you ever hated your own subconscious?"

Jason sighed, dropped his face into his hands, and said, "I hate my dreams so much, Spencer. Every night, I wake up and I've either…" He raised his head, inhaled. "I've either killed Ali or…I mean. It sucks."

She reached for him, wrapped her hand around his bare wrist. He shifted a little, slid his hand around so he could move her palm to his, twist his fingers with his. She squeezed his hand. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, well. Here's my theory: They're dreams, right? So there's no point in feeling guilty about them. I know I didn't actually kill Ali; I know I've never actually, well—Ali and I weren't exactly friends, but now I know I didn't kill her, at least. Feeling guilty about what I've done in my dreams, that makes no sense."

Spencer inched closer to Jason, leaned her head on his shoulder. Comfort, she told herself, comfort over his lost sister, her lost friend.

"So anything can happen in dreams, and there're never any consequences?"

"Exactly." Jason was smiling, she could hear it in his voice. "Dreams are like Vegas."

Spencer bit her lip. It was still mostly dark out. She still saw him kissing her when she closed her eyes. She felt like she hadn't woken up. She felt like the simple act of wanting had turned wrong and then turned right again, like she was dreaming with her eyes open.

"Could this be a dream?" she heard the words before she realized exactly what they meant, realized exactly what she was asking.

Jason froze. He stopped breathing for a moment, and then he turned his head. She lifted hers from his shoulder and his lips were so close, they were right there, the way they always were in her sleep.

"I think," he whispered, "I think this is a dream." And then he kissed her. His lips were heavier in this dream, his kiss warmer—she felt like all the natural disasters in the world, pressed against a man who was never her brother when her eyes were closed.


End file.
